“Listen up,” I say.
They turn to me. Roman looks tense, Tran eager. Fadul has a hard, vindictive expression like she’s out for payback.
“We want to move fast,” I remind them. “Get in and get out. Because the longer we take, the more resistance will be in place. Once we leave the gate, we don’t slow down for anything. Clear?”
Roman nods. “Yes, sir.”
Tran lifts his chin and gives me a parade-ground formal “Understood, sir.”
Fadul rolls her eyes. “We got it, Shelley.”
I nod. “Hoo-yah.”
They respond in an energized whisper,
“Hoo-yah!”
“Helmets on.”
I pull on my helmet. The fans kick in, cooling my face, while the squad icons arrange themselves across the bottom of my vision. I do an observational roll call, checking off the distant presence of Logan, Escamilla, Dunahee, Vasquez, and Flynn.
We don’t have a dedicated squad drone. In a hostile urban environment, those tend to get shot down early in the game. Instead, Guidance has put together a hybrid
map compiled from high-altitude surveillance, real-time observations gathered by our seekers, the location of known street cameras and their present condition—working or vandalized—and the current position of the district’s security drone. The result is a representation of the district cast in shifting shadows that designate “safe” areas temporarily free from observation by machines that don’t belong to us.
The district’s civilians are marked too. There aren’t many out on the street at this time of night, but there are a few. One is an old bearded man muttering Arabic words in a cadence that sounds like poetry as he wanders alone in the deepest surveillance shadows where only our seekers are watching. It’s the route we want to use.
“Physically harmless,” Kanoa concludes. “But if he has a phone, take it. You might gain an extra minute of stealth.”
So our first task is to mug an old man. “Roger that.” Another proud achievement for my service record. It pisses me off even more, because I know I won’t hesitate to do it.
Jaynie checks in over gen-com. “You with me, Shelley?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Initiate the operation.”
“Roger that. Kanoa, post our route.”
On my visor’s display, a faint blue path appears.
“Routes are posted,” I tell the squad. “Fadul, confirm yours.”
“Confirmed.”
“Roman?”
“Confirmed.”
“Tran?”
“Confirmed, sir.”
There’s no way anyone can get lost.
“Move out.”
In the courtyard, the squad dog leaves the corner it
occupied overnight. I watch it warily as it trots up to the closed gate. Then I turn to Leonid.
He’s already in the driver’s seat of the SUV. His role is to move south to one of the safe houses and wait. If things go well, we won’t see him again tonight. Abajian will pull us out by helicopter, and it’ll be done. If things go badly, we’ll hole up in one of the safe houses, and Leonid will tap into his network of associates to try to smuggle us out of Iraq.
He looks at me as I pause beside the SUV’s window. “Is it you, Shelley, behind this devil’s mask?”
“It’s me.”
Leonid has conjured no fond insincerity to hide his feelings tonight. Night vision smoothes his wrinkles, but it doesn’t disguise his worry. “Twenty minutes,” he tells me. “You shouldn’t need more time than that.” And then he adds, “God willing.”
“Open the gate, Papa.”
He triggers the remote. The gate swings open. The squad dog slips through. We follow a few meters behind it, running all out. My helmet audio dampens the thud of our tread, while enhancing the sound of a television—and then it decides the TV is unimportant and slides the volume back down. I hear distant traffic, the soft buzz of seekers, my own heavy breathing—and after a block I hear the old man’s voice, amplified. We can’t route around him because we need to be in the same surveillance shadow he is occupying. We can’t wait for him to go away because we need to be inside the target building before the district’s surveillance drone makes its next pass over these streets. So we assault him.
He’s walking slowly, still muttering to himself, and maybe he’s a little deaf because he doesn’t hear us coming. The squad dog drops back. I move up. I get to do the dirty work.
I come up fast behind him, get one gloved hand over his nose and mouth and an arm around his chest. He struggles,
clawing at my hand, at my arm struts, his heels kicking at my shins. But his resistance lasts for only a few seconds before oxygen deprivation makes him slump in my arms.
I lower him gently to the ground, telling myself he isn’t dead. He’s just passed out. I search him, finding a phone and a handgun.
We move on.
We meet no one else on the street, but we can’t control for eyes watching us from windows or rooftops, or for a silent chain of alarm propagating from phone to phone or across social media.
My helmet audio picks up and amplifies a faint flurry of voices when we’re still two blocks from the target. “Assume you’ve been noticed,” Kanoa warns.
And a few seconds later: “You’re about to come under enemy fire.”
“Cover!”
We fall back against the brick wall of a three-story apartment, crouched, with our weapons ready. A targeting circle appears on my visor, marking a window across the street. I ask no questions. There’s no way to know who’s in that room: a man or a woman or little kids. I just shoot. But the neighborhood defense has rallied with shocking speed. Muzzle flash erupts from at least three windows. A round grazes the side of my helmet with a high-pitched
ping,
while more bullets tear at the brick behind me. Our plan of a quick, stealthy assault is blown.
“Move!”
I order the squad, because it’s a lot harder to hit an object in motion.
We run and shoot. Even with the battle AI pulling the trigger, I don’t think we hit much, but we make it dangerous to sit in a window and for now, that’s good enough.
The squad dog runs ahead, disappearing around the next corner. In the practice assaults we did back in Germany it
behaved like a berserker, but tonight it hasn’t fired a shot. I want to ask Kanoa about it, but there’s no time. More people are waking, arming themselves, taking shots at us despite the danger posed by our return fire. I stumble as a round strikes my side, knocking the air out of my lungs as it pancakes in my vest. Two more steps bring me to the last intersection.
I crouch with my back against the wall of another apartment building and look up, scanning the face of the building across the street and the one diagonally across the corner. Targeting circles pop up on my visor and I fire, once, twice, three times.
“On the roof,” Kanoa says.
I lift my gaze higher, find a targeting circle on the edge of the roof. Three quick shots are answered by a scream. The taste of lead bitter on my tongue. “Fadul, move! Get across the street.”
She darts across, moves sideways between parked cars, then drops out of sight.
“Roman, go.”
We do our best to discourage shooting from the windows, and one by one we get across.
We’ve reached the block with the target lab. We’re one building away. Someone tosses a flare into the street, blinding me for a few seconds until my visor compensates. Gunfire rages on all sides. Half the shooters are aiming at shadows, but enough know where we are that the car in front of us is perforated by bullets, the wall above us is being chipped away. Shrapnel pings against my helmet. It tears at the heavy camouflage fabric of my uniform.
“Grenades,” I growl over gen-com.
This is my nightmare—a well-armed civilian militia—and they’re not even guarding the target lab. It’s my guess they don’t know it exists, they don’t know why we’re here.
But they’ve faced rival militias before and fought off threats to their lives, their homes, their families.
I remind myself that we are here because the American government has been attacked, officials murdered, President Monteiro’s life threatened. I pull the second trigger, launching a grenade at a third-floor window in the building diagonally across the intersection.
“New route,” Kanoa says, his voice weirdly hoarse and mechanical as my projected route shifts, the blue path directing me down the cross street, away from the service door. It looks like Command has decided we will enter through the front door instead.
“Run.”
Kanoa’s harsh tone allows for no questions. We run, sprinting in a pack for the next corner, crazy shadows cast by the flare bounding along with us in exaggerated, inhuman strides. Maybe those shadows confuse the enemy or maybe they’re wondering what we’re running from, I don’t know, but the shooting stops before we’re halfway.
“Hunker down,” Kanoa says.
I dive for the ground. Roll against a brick wall and curl up beneath my pack as the wall heaves and my helmet audio locks down against a massive explosion. The pressure wave sucks the air out of my lungs, compresses my brain, leaving me dizzy, unsure which way is up as I twist around to look. My visor, still in night vision, shows me a white-out of flame boiling past the corner we just abandoned. Concrete debris tumbles from the sky, bouncing in the street. There is a roar of fire, and water spraying from broken pipes, and people screaming. A chorus of screaming. Women and men, screaming in pain, horror, despair, fury. Lights come on in the buildings around us as voices call to God.
Tran whispers over gen-com, “What the fuck? What—”
“Was that a missile?” Fadul wants to know. Her voice is
shaking. “Or a fucking car bomb? Goddamn it, Kanoa, we were not supposed to blow these people up!”
Jaynie cuts her off. “Drop the chatter! Rendezvous with team one. We have the front door open. We’re going in.”
• • • •
For breathless seconds all is still—not silent, no—but no one moves in the street, no one emerges from the buildings, no one runs to answer their neighbors’ cries of agony because bitter experience has taught them that rescuers are too often met by a second bomb.
The stillness lets us move freely. With all eyes drawn to the carnage around the corner we have become invisible in the dark cross street. It won’t last. So I urge my team,
Run!
—the order repeated aloud over gen-com in my calm, synthetic voice.
Roman is closest to the corner. She takes off first. Tran gives her three seconds to establish a proper interval, and then he follows. Fadul goes next. I stay crouched in place, my HITR braced against my shoulder, ready to provide covering fire. Roman pulls up when she reaches the corner. Dropping to one knee, she raises her weapon to cover me. I sprint hard to catch up.
Fadul’s questions echo in my mind. Was it a missile or a car bomb? And was it
ours
? A backup plan to knock out resistance if the mission got bogged down? None of us wanted to advance this mission by stepping over the bodies of civilians. We did not ask to do it this way. It’s not the mission we planned—but it’s on us anyway.
I turn the corner as gunfire erupts from a building across the street. Roman swings around, returns fire. Dunahee is farther down the block. He starts shooting, backing her up. I drop behind a parked car, my gaze sweeping the building, looking for a target. The battle AI designates two,
both in second-floor windows. I take one out with a grenade—“Roman, get moving!”—and then I nail the second target.
The blue path points the way.
Time to finish this.
• • • •
On this side of the building, there is a recessed entry opening onto a formal lobby with slate-tile floors. The double doors—ornate steel mesh backed with shattered glass—have been blown open and are hanging on broken hinges. Logan, Flynn, and Dunahee are in the entry, hunkered down, using the doors for shelter as they cover the street. I’m stunned to see the squad dog with them, its dual weapons sweeping from side to side as it seeks for a target on the rooftops.
I can’t hear their chatter, which means Kanoa has isolated communications so we can all focus on our own tasks. Logan signals me to get the hell inside. I sprint past him, pivot, and press my back against the wall while I look around. I’ve already visited this little lobby on a virtual tour, but it looks different to me now because the lights are out and I’m seeing it in night vision.
The décor is a hundred years old: stained plaster walls bearing tile mosaics; a threadbare carpet; on the left hand, a bank of tiny mailboxes with little brass doors darkened by time; on the right, a stairway with polished-wood treads and a cast-iron handrail climbing to the second floor. Escamilla stands guard at the top of the stair.
“Escamilla, do we have civilians up there?”
“Roger that. At least six apartments.”
“No resistance so far,” Jaynie adds. “They’re staying out of sight.”
At first I don’t see her. That’s because my team—Fadul,
Roman, and Tran—are all clustered around her at the back of the lobby.
“Fire in the hole,” she says. All of them scramble toward me. I turn my head away. There’s a bright flash and the loud
bang!
of a det cord explosion. I look again, to see a steel door pop a few inches open, shedding smoke.
“I’ll take it,” I say, and move in, following the blue path. I kick the door wide and shove the muzzle of my HITR around the corner to let the battle AI get a look.
“Stairwell clear,” Kanoa says. “Advance.”
I pivot onto a landing above a narrow staircase that plunges into a pit. A second steel door is at the bottom. I jump down; try the bar handle. It’s locked. I kick it hard with my footplate, once, twice, but it holds.
“Blow it,” Jaynie says over gen-com.
I look up. She tosses me det cord. I rig it around the latch, then retreat to the top of the stairs. From out front I hear staccato gunfire. My helmet suppresses the volume, but it’s clear that Logan, Flynn, and Dunahee are working hard to defend our position—and they’re vulnerable.
“Kanoa, you need to get someone at an upstairs window.” I flinch as Jaynie triggers the det cord. Then I pivot back into the stairwell to see the door at the bottom blown ajar. Faint light spills through, green in night vision. “If RPGs come into play—”